Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Monday, February 11, 2013

April 3, 1882 – Jesse James Flees Missouri

As famous outlaw Jesse James prepared his gang for
another robbery, he noticed a picture frame was dusty.He climbed onto a chair and proceeded to dust
and straighten it.Behind him, one of
his gang members, Bob Ford, shot at him, narrowly missing his head.Infuriated, James jumped down the chair and
threw it at Bob, who had already run out the kitchen door.James chased him into the streets of Saint
Joseph, Missouri, firing several shots before mounting his horse and
disappearing, riding east.

James' life had been one of hardship.He was born in 1847 to Baptist minister
Robert S. and Zerelda James, who moved from Kentucky to Missouri and contributed
to founding William Jewel College.Robert
led the family to California during the 1849 Gold Rush to become
ministers.He died there shortly after,
leaving behind his widow, James, his older brother Frank, and his younger
sister Susan.Zerelda remarried, but
their new stepfather Benjamin Simms was cruel to the young boys.She divorced him and remarried again, this
time to a soft-spoken man, Dr. Reuben Samuel, who left his practice to work the
James farm.

While his home life became peaceful, the rest of
the nation turned to war.The James-Samuels
lived on the pro-Confederacy western part of Missouri, a border state that
determined to stay with the Union.Locals formed militias known as "bushwackers" for those
supporting secession and Unionist "jayhawkers", and the state became
plagued with guerilla war.Frank James joined
the war on the Confederate side, fighting at the Battle of Wilson's Creek
before taking sick-leave.In 1863,
Jayhawkers came to the farm hunting Frank.They tortured Samuel by hanging him before cutting him down and
reportedly whipped Jesse.Jesse soon
departed the farm to meet up with Frank, who had fought as part of Quantrill's
Raiders before returning to Missouri.The two brothers participated in massacres, learning skills in surprise
tactics and psychological warfare, such as scalping and killing those who
surrendered.Jesse himself attempted to
surrender near Lexington, Missouri, where he was shot in the chest and forced
to sit out the rest of the war.He was
nursed back to health by his cousin Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, whom he
married in 1874.

As the Civil War ended, the days of Reconstruction
came.Confederates were banned from
voting, preaching, and forming corporations.Many rebels continued the fight, operating as outlaws pulling robberies
and harassing local government.Jesse
and Frank fell in with the outlaws, joining a gang of brothers headed by fellow
guerilla Cole Younger.The James-Younger
gang became famous in December of 1869 when Jesse shot a bank cashier mistaking
him for a former Union militia officer.The act of revenge on the Union and the James' larger-than-life escape
put his name in the newspapers.While
many dubbed them deplorable criminals, founder and editor of the
Kansas City Times and former Confederate John Newman Edwards
gave them a sense of heroism fighting the oppression of Reconstruction.He began publishing letters written by James,
who claimed innocence and made argument for the right to resist tyrants.

For several years, the gang committed numerous
robberies over half the country.As
their fame grew, they were able to commit public robberies, even joking with fawning
witnesses.Many considered them
heroically fighting corruption, though they themselves never donated any of their
income.The government attempted to
crack down on them; Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden stated in his
inaugural address that their arrest was priority.Companies hired the Pinkerton Detectives to
hunt the gang down, but the agent sent to the James farm was later discovered
dead.In a shootout, Pinkertons killed
several of the Youngers.A robbery gone
wrong at the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, and the following
manhunt wiped out the Youngers while the Jameses disappeared.

Frank decided to give up the life of an outlaw, but
Jesse formed up a new gang and began a new spree.This gang, however, did not have the
cohesiveness of the ex-Confederates.Infighting occurred, and Jesse turned paranoid.He insisted that his two gangmembers, Charley
and Bob Ford, move in with him.His
paranoia proved right when Bob attempted to murder him and collect the
governor's $5000 reward.

Soon after Jesse disappeared from St. Joe, Irish
poet Oscar Wilde arrived in town looking for the famous outlaw.He had arrived in America that January and
began an adventurous lecture tour on aestheticism.Wilde was disappointed but left word of where
he could be reached.While drinking with
miners in Leadville, Colorado, a man introduced himself as Jesse James.The two sat up late talking, discussing ethics
and Wilde's famous quote "It's not whether I did it or not that's
important, but whether people believed I did it" in
comparison with James' "heroic" outlaw life.James seemed annoyed by Wilde's lack of
conviction, but, upon Wilde's invitation to smuggle him and his family back to
Europe, James agreed to travel with him.

James began his own lecture tour, visiting numerous
cities in the United Kingdom as well as several countries on the
Continent.He and Wilde conversed a
number of times again, and James signed alongside Wilde on the petition put out
by George Bernard Shaw to pardon the violent strikers at Chicago's Haymarket
Riot in 1886.James noted to Wilde the
importance of maintaining an unquestionable personal clout rather than
depending on the law. Wilde himself was
believed to have practiced the advice when his feud with the Marquess of
Queensberry ended with a fistfight between the two.

In 1892, James finally returned to America.He had written to his brother Frank, who was
living under an assumed name as a shoe salesman, and the two decided to come
clean.After a fanfare trial, the two
were acquitted.Jesse and Zee settled
back on the farm, where their mother had been leading tours of the famous
raid.His son, Jesse Edward James,
studied law and became a prominent Missouri politician.James continued to write, dying in 1917
shortly after America's entry into World War I, for which he had campaigned
vehemently as revenge on German u-boat attacks.

--

In reality, Bob Ford shot Jesse
James in the back of the head.He and
his brother surrendered, were convicted of murder, and then pardoned.Frank was later acquitted of his crimes and
lived his life quietly.Oscar Wilde
narrowly missed meeting Jesse James.Later, Wilde attempted a libel case against Queensberry due to
accusations of sodomy, but he lost the case and was sentenced to two years hard
labor for "gross indecency."